It feels as if most of my time these days is spent working, exercising and reading (online and off), but today I went up to visit my friend Mary in Massachusetts. The original plan was to have lunch and then go for a swim in her pool, but today dawned rainy and downright cold for August so we didn't do the pool part.

Her boyfriend, K, had the day off today so the three of us headed out to a Greek restaurant for lunch. They're both pretty heavy and they're currently dieting doing Nutri system, but that's one of those diets where you have to eat mostly packaged food so they weren't following it at the restaurant. Mary spoke a bit of the thrill of eating "bad" food (i.e. she had some white bread with butter and we all shared an order of onion rings). I don't like to refer to foods as good and bad, but I didn't let it bother me.

Some time during lunch pot smoking came up. Turns out, K had some and asked if I liked it, and I said yes I did. In fact, I said, "I LOVE that stuff." I used to be a total pot head, but now I hardly ever smoke. The last time I had some I think was in 2004. Although I'm glad I don't smoke regularly anymore, I was definitely up for it today.

After lunch we drove around for a while looking at all the cool old houses in the area and then we headed back to their house. Their house is a gorgeous old Victorian, but the inside of it is a chaos of boxes and boxes full of stuff with more stuff on top of that and so on. We eventually cleared some space on the couch and sat down to watch some TV and have a little smoke. They have Tivo and Mary suggested we watch this show from a series they had taped from VH-1 about drugs in America.

The show was good, but K would pause it occasionally and we'd all talk for a while. Mary is a total bird freak and she kept exclaiming about the "cute" birds that were out at the feeders they had. I have to say the birds were pretty impressive - there were lots of gold finches, some cardinals and even a couple of woodpeckers. Fascinating to see all those since most of what I see at my feeder is house sparrows and starlings and other "dull" colored birds.

After we finished watching the first installment of the drugs series, we watched a clip from the Onion and then the starting of Big Love. I had mentioned I used to watch Dr. Who a long time ago on public TV when I lived in Vermont and K said there were new episodes on now and wanted me to see some of it so we watched part of an episode. I would like to be able to start watching Dr Who again, and start from the beginning. I think there is tons of it though, and I'm not sure it's available on Netflix although I have seen some VHS tapes of it at the library.

I headed home a little after 6 and got home at 7. I gave Blue and Trinka some pets and gave Sweetie (who was out getting our order from Szechuan Tokyo when I first arrived) lots of hugs and kisses. Then we ate our food and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a good day.

Watching: Charlotte Gray (2001) staring Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup and Michael Gambon. I've been wanting to see this movie for a while since it is about Vichy France which I didn't even know about until I took a European history class a few years ago. Although I enjoyed watching this movie (the acting, costumes and cinematography were excellent), the story didn't amount to much. I felt as if I had seen this before - there would be a shocking revelation (turns out Michael Gambon is part Jewish) and there would be redemption thanks to the courage of our plucky heroine. However, the redemption was very slight - she risks her life to type a letter? Roger Ebert's review sums it up well.

The West Wing, Season Three.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Three.

Reading: Victory by Joseph Conrad. I finished this last weekend, and I feel a real sense of accomplishment since it was something I should have read back in high school, but never did until now. It's a bit dense, and there is definitely an ethnocentric perspective, but it was still a pretty good read.

The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. Now I'm reading this. Very intriguing with lots of sex and death imagery.

Labels: friends, reading, watching

posted by Miss Rachel 8/10/2007 09:13:00 PM

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